It's a sound installation that creates music or rhythms with water.
My name is Sara Valente.
[Male Voice] And my name is Marcelo Ertorteguy.
And we are Stereotank.
Stereotank was born in 2009.
Our goal was to use space as an instrument.
So sort of like you can inhabit the musical instrument.
Of course, that evolved into many other iterations.
We've been trained as architects.
We moved to New York, and then while we were working in architectural offices, on the side,
we started to do art projects in the city; public art, temporary installations and so
on.
And that was also a perfect territory to experiment, this is idea of combining public art and sound
or architecture and sound into immersive installations.
We found several opportunities, grants and awards to be able to propose quick installations
that could be done in the city, just targeting some areas that were underdeveloped or underused
that needed activation.
We try to experiment with sound, always in a very primitive way.
The first sound installation we did was actually called "Stereotank", and that's where our
name came from.
We took these huge plastic water tanks, side by side, and then connecting them.
So the actual string that was creating the sound was also part of the structure of the
installation, because it was keeping it together.
So we liked that idea of joining architecture and sound, even through structure of a project.
So, we were invited to propose a project for Time Square.
We won, luckily, this competition and we had to design a heart-shaped installation.
That was the premise of the proposal.
It had to be related to love and we never saw ourselves doing anything like that, so
we took it really our way and looking at the heart more from a acoustical point of view.
The heart had some drums embedded, so people could stop and play.
There were actually six different acoustical percussion instruments.
Very low frequency sound, beating with a light.
All of this was pulsating while the heart was not being played by people.
We had to figure something out that was sturdy enough, and we went back again to the plastic
tank.
Thinking about the afterlife of a project, we designed the "HeartBeat" project for being
able to be transformed after its use in Time Square as another project that is called "HeartSeat".
We're gonna show a sample of the "CargoGuitar".
The "CargoGuitar" was a project that we did in Japan.
This extra long string, it's within a shipping container, so that's how we came up with the
name.
The string is amplified, but it doesn't any kind of effect.
So the string becomes smaller, and the tone higher.
When we arrived in Miami, we couldn't really treat public spaces the same, because it's
completely different.
So what we started doing is actually going first inside of galleries where we could experiment
with space and also people.
So the first one we did is called "Generative Drop Sequencer".
To engage more with public space here in Miami as well, we've been working with some students
at FIU on a seminar that has to with the public space and art.
[Marcelo] I think we have to mention about the "Little Free Library" project.
[Sara] It's basically turning the standard Little Free Library format into an inhabitable
Little Free Library.
We've also been working on our own project, our own house and studio.
[Marcelo] We start with one idea, but we never really know how it will sound until we finish
it.
[Sara] That applies to sound, but also applies to working with given materials in general,
because when you have to work with an object that already exists, that has its own properties,
then you really need to adapt to it.
So, that's, we think, the beauty of working with materials and with systems that have
been designed for other purposes.